A Three Opera House Metropolis.

I also attended the “Staatsoper Unter Den Linden” during the ‘Long Night of Opera and Theatre’. As was to be expected there was a good deal of good-natured pushing and shoving to get to the seats. Nothing very regal about any of it, although the house was built by King Frederick The Great in 1742, only few steps from his palace, the Stadtschloss. It was one of the must-haves of royalty to own an opera company at court.

The Staatsoper is a picture book house: much stucco and gilding, a splendid chandelier, red velvet seats and and elegantly curved balconies. I am told that the audience prizes a special evening out, not least to “see and be seen” during the intermission. When I at last had my glass of bubbly and had a moment to look about the lobby, the ‘crème’ of Berlin society was not in evidence, but rather surprisingly young and lively and opera sprouts, who opted for coke and lager.

I forewent the chance to visit the “Komische Oper”, also Unter den Linden. The original building fell victim to the bombs. It was also rebuilt by the Communists. The house reflects the splendour and tastes of its Berlin’s version of the “belle epoche’ in the 1890s. The Komische Oper attracts a younger public with its daring stagings of opera classics. In fact, I experienced one such version of Don Giovanni, where the cast spent more time lying about the stage than on their feet. Chacun a son gout!

The Deutsche Oper in the city’s West End was conceived in 1912 as the bourgeois riposte to the aristo Staatsoper – lots of Wagner being the antidote. It also fell victim to the bombs and was rebuilt in 1962 with conscious democrat intent. Whereas in the Staatsoper and the Komische Oper only the expensive seats see all of the stage (I never have!), all 1,800 seats in the Deutsche Oper have.

Actually, there is a fourth house, the Neukoellner Oper, located on the third floor above a movie theatre and a bowling alley on –appropriately – Karl Marxstrasse. There seriously underpaid artists offer programs considered by insiders to be more exciting than those of the operatic ‘supertankers’.